


The Cycle of All Things

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-20
Updated: 2006-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:35:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1631861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for Nyx Midnight</p>
    </blockquote>





	The Cycle of All Things

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Nyx Midnight

 

 

It was just before daybreak and the newly awakened Kagutsuchi slowly illuminated the torrid landscape with faint red and orange hues. The dulled copper appearance of soot and soil belied what had once been a land fertile with the green growth of vegetation and life.

The Conception had rendered all the land here lifeless and created the breathtakingly lurid Kagutsuchi induced colors in the sky above them. The very same colors that the ragtag group of demons were witness to as their haphazard group lumbered down the paved but vigorously potholed road.

Even as they traveled for miles the landscape did not change much. Dirt, dust, sand, rocks; brown on yellow on top of some more brown. Traveling on the outer fringes of Red Magatsuhi, they moved past fallen skyscrapers in cities that barely resembled anything even remotely considered inhabitable as decrepit buildings appeared nothing more than ruined mausoleums in ancient, unmarked graveyards.

Once, large crowds of humanity had loudly milled about here in the idle processes of their daily lives. Now everything was serenely silent as one dead with the only sound being the wind whistling through broken windows. Windows which stared out at them like ruined eyes, as if testifying to their own demise.

These little adventures which involved traveling through these wasted lands with little or no motive, other than some old man had hinted without words to them on where to go, had become common place for them. Most missions were often not quite as simple and straightforward as the strange, elderly man dressed in white would have liked them to believe, and with each successive excursion the enemy attacks had grown more organized and deliberate.

It was not too long before their destination, the Tower of Kagutsuchi, finally arose out of the distance like a camera lens slowly zooming into focus before them. The Tower, which had only been a speck on the horizon earlier, now loomed before them all deformed and heat warping metal and was in a constant state of fluxation, changing, burning, melting, losing its shape and form.

It was twisted asylum for those who had gathered the life giving Magatsuhi and had used its power to give birth to their Reason. Musubi, Yosuga, Shijima and their demon factions were assembled there now, waiting. They were waiting for him, the Hito-Shura.

There was hazard on the air and the Hito-Shura with his heightened senses could almost smell it. The tiny hairs on the back of his neck prickled into life and stood on end as his horn thrummed with an almost eager anticipation.

"This is it." A cocky voice proclaimed for them all to hear, and the Kagutsuchi rising above the bloodied horizon flashed bright white. "Showtime, baby."

* * * * *

The inside of the tower had felt exceptionally hot when they first entered it, and was a massive maze of moving blocks and lethal pitfalls. Built on the foundation of the now partially submerged Obelisk, the building's skeletal structure wobbled crazily, as if ready to give up the ghost and collapse on top of their unwary heads at any moment. The hollow halls and high ceilings reminded him of cathedrals from the photographs he had seen in his school text books a lifetime ago.

* * * * *

Slowly, ignoring the million little, and other not quite so little, protests of achingly sore muscles he eased himself into the healing waters of the Fountain of Life and sighed. Sometime during their last altercation he had been greatly wounded and the Hito-Shura sat staring blankly down at his rapidly healing wounds, flesh easily knitting itself back together in the cool water.

He moved to dip his hands into this water, to wash his face which was gritty with dirt, and found himself frozen with a paralyzing despair at what his eyes showed to him. Blood, blood was drying and clotting on his hands and turning into the consistency of muddy molasses. Isamu's blood.

Great black flowers began to pop into bloom before his eyes and the sound of someone's heavy breathing was heard loudly rasping in his ears. The Hito-Shura knew that it could only be his own as something inside of him was twisting and so painful that it brought back old memories of the past. Memories that could not be blotted out of his mind, no matter how hard he tried.

* * * * *

He was remembering, remembering Isamu. Isamu Nitta, his friend from school, the boy he had practically grown up with. Isamu, the boy who had never found himself a love of his own, or a place to belong...Isamu, he was dead now, and he had only been a boy...The boy who had strung Jyoji Hijiri up and killed him the memory of the man as if he were nothing more than an animal...

Isamu will never be able to feel anything again, and his Reason would never be realized. He was dead and gone from this world, and there would never be another sunrise, sunset or anything else between for him, because he, like the angry Kagutsuchi in the sky, knew how the endless cycles of things were finally going to end. Suddenly, the Hito-Shura's eyes were burning so badly that he thought for sure that they would start overflowing with bloody tears.

He had killed Isamu Nitta? Was the Netherstone really worth the life of his friend? The utter absurdity of it made him want to laugh but he couldn't, the pain was just too great, and not just the pain in his side where Noah had wounded him either. Suddenly, the nothing that he had been trying so hard to hold onto broke down, and he thought for just a moment that he would cry, but he did not.

The landscape of his face stayed warm and dry as his sadness slipped from him like a thin piece of cloth on the wind, and he let it leave him with no words of parting. As he was resting, the thumb of his left hand idly brushed over the rawness of sore flesh rousing him from his scatted thoughts, and he had to bite back on a yelp of pain.

"You have nice skin, Hito-Shura." He heard a voice mumble, and slowly looked up to see the Manikin Sakahagi leering lecherously at him from under his layers of stolen skin. His thick, black hair falling unevenly to the side and looking unkempt, as if he had cut it with a straight razor in the dark. "You should care better for it."

At a loss for what to say, the Hito-Shura merely nodded his head and his demon subordinate shambled past with a disturbing grin, but not before setting another lecherously long stare on his body. As familiar as it was, it still looked a little creepy to see that Manikin smile at him underneath all those stolen skins of dead Manikin faces.

"If I were you..." A voice quietly whispered to him from behind and Futomimi was there giving him a grave smile, but in his mind the Hito-Shura saw her, and she was smiling. Chiaki. She had smiled at him on that day in Mifunashiro, and it hadn't been a nice smile, but one that was corrupted with evil and ill intentions.

* * * * *

A sour bitterness had filled the Hito-Shura with wrathful and vindictive thoughts as he stood amidst the bodies of fallen Manikins in Mifunashiro. Chiaki genuinely had looked very surprised when he had looked her dead in the eye and refused to side with her. Refused to join her in the slaughter the defenseless Manikins whom to her were nothing more than worthless bags of dirt.

For a long moment she had not moved, and then she had pulled back a bit with an incredulous look in her eyes and set her angels: Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael upon him. It had not been a long battle, but it was just long enough to hinder any attempt to help Futomimi and his people. All the Hito-Shura had heard after the battle was the dull cracking sound, like that of an overripe melon bursting, and he had known that he was too late.

Chiaki had crushed Futomimi's head in her hand with fingers that were every bit as strong a stone talons puncturing through the Manikin's skull. The Hito-Shura had stared in shock as his face was splattered with muddy blood and bits of sandy flesh. Futomimi's slack face stared blankly back at him as that same muddy blood ran in rivulets from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears.

* * * * *

"I would think about investing in a shirt." Futomimi finished, confiding to him sagely. "You do have very impressive tattoos on your skin, if I may say so Demi-fiend. Yet, they might prove irresistible to Sakahagi and his...addiction."

"Yes, well..." The Hito-Shura shrugged his shoulders. "Sakahagi has sworn his loyalty to me just as you have, and I trust him. Trust him just as much as anyone else in this party, that is." The Hito-Shura surreptitiously studied the devil hunter who had just walked into the room with great distaste from his little vantage point in the corner of the Fountain of Life and grumbled. "More so than others, actually."

* * * * *

Initially, Dante had not wanted to join forces with him at all. Ruthlessly, he had pummeled him with a relentless barrage of bullets and rude comments and had chased him throughout the Third Kalpa of the Labyrinth of Amala. He seemed to have been waiting for the Hito-Shura to declare any weakness or evil intentions so he could shoot him in the head and be done with it. Somehow, he had endured it all with a calm levity, calling upon the clear tranquility of his human heart to see him through.

"Can I survive in difficult situations? Am I a capable leader and fighter? I could regale you with tales about how I lived through this, and successfully fought and defeated that, but all that really matters is that I survived. I survived and lived through the Conception. In my doing so I believe that I could pretty much survive anything."

"You're stubborn, but you've got spunk kid. I like that." Although he appeared the misfit with his rugged appearance, Dante likened to swift adherence to his own code of honor, and seemed to weigh the balance of all things in the Vortex World upon upholding and maintaining his beliefs. That was one of the main reasons why he forfeited the job given to him by the old man in the wheelchair to side with him.

"You have a strange way of showing affection for someone if it's by shooting them in the head." The boy muttered under his breath, and much to his surprise, Dante laughed.

* * * * *

"Do you have a question for me, Dante?" The Hito-Shura asked, rising from the fountain slowly.

"Nope," Dante stretched out his arms and yawned. Unlike his other demons who tended to cluster around him and not wander off, Dante came and went as he pleased and never bothered to ask for permission. "In fact, I come bearing gifts for my little buddy." He paused for a moment and began patting down his pockets. "I bought this off a walking pile of dirt while you were dicking around in here, and these are getting harder and harder to come by, so if you're not nice..." He somberly held up the squirming little creature and began to crush it in his fist.

"That's a Magatama?" He gaped in awe and reached out to snatch it but the demon hunter pulled it away and wagged a finger at him as he backed out the door.

Annoyed, the Hito-Shura followed the fiend out of the Fountain of Life and chased after him until he had finally cornered Dante in the quiet darkness of the Terminal. The faint light in the room caught and reflected in his white-blond hair making it almost appear to shimmer with an ethereal halo of rainbow colors.

"Uh-uh," Dante wagged a finger at him at him again and the Hito-Shura debated breaking that finger off and shoving it where the Kagutsuchi never shined. "Are you going to be nice to me?" The devil hunter asked, a seedy twang flickering in his voice and the Hito-Shura rolled his eyes to look up at the ceiling and shook his head. He knew enough to know what kind of nice Dante required in exchange for the Magatama.

"Nice enough." He snapped and extended an open palm in unapologetic demand.

"Here you go then." Dante didn't even bother to try and suppress that grin of victory from forming on his face, but as promised he plunked the Magatama into the Hito-Shura's waiting hand.

"Sophia." The demi-fiend said in a dubious voice as he held up the squirming little centipede like creature. "This was the best that you could get?"

"If you don't like it...then I'll just take it back." Dante sniffed, but his face couldn't hide the amusement he felt as he reached for the Magatama.

"No!" The demon boy with a human heart quickly yanked the Magatama from Dante's hand just as his fingers were brushing against the creature and immediately swallowed it.

"Those hurt?" Dante asked, leaning in to intently study his face, and the Hito-Shura cast him a look of warning and a frown.

"I can take pain, thank you." he replied breath hissing in and out as he braced himself for the familiar burn as the Magatama fused with his body.

"Humph." Dante snorted making it painfully obvious that his expression of gratitude wasn't the kind of thanks that he was looking for. "Those Magatama that you insist upon slamming into your body, are they really worth all the trouble it takes in getting them?"

"What are you going on about?" Shura inquired warily.

"I just want to know." Dante paused for a toothy grin. "If little buddy here is positively sure that these bug critters are giving him exactly what he wants? Y'know, you're not going to be able to just go back to being a human when everything is said and done, right?"

"Of course, I know that," Naoki snapped vehemently, his normally mild countenance replaced with something darker and almost frightening. "I evolved past such lines as human and demon a long time ago. No, not so long ago...maybe only after this past fight with Isamu. Doing the things that I have done and knowing now that Chiaki will be next...I don't think that I could ever go back to being a human ever again."

* * * * *

Hikawa had been the first that they had defeated and the Ahriman had displayed all the esthetic sense of simple elegance as he waited patiently for them to arrive. His very presence seemed to exude nobility, royalty, power, yet somehow he also seemed to radiate cold as well as if he were detached from his surroundings and ultimately emotionless. He died while wearing the combination of reluctance and relief on his face.

* * * * *

"Well, okay then." Dante gave him a humoring grin and then pushed him up against the nearest wall.

At first, under the assumption that they were fighting, the Hito-Shura readied himself for battle, but no other violence followed. They seemed to be in a forced stalemate, each staring intently as if they could see through the eyes and read into the other's mind.

"We're different from them y'know." Dante whispered softly, almost seductively in his ear. "There's a reason why we never stand up there on that damn platform in the Cathedral of Shadows. We are half human, half demon and that's what makes us different, and even though I cannot understand why you would choose to become something that I was born and loathe myself for, I can understand how you feel because I am just like you."

"Dante I never..." As independent as he had trained himself to be, he was still dependently bound to his demons. If it weren't for them, he knew without a doubt that he would have perished long ago. He didn't fuse or sacrifice them by choice, rather it was necessity and he honored the memory of every demon he ever commanded in the Demonic Compendium.

"Yes, Hito-Shura?" Dante had evenly spaced white teeth, the Hito-Shura noted and found himself incessantly studying them whenever he spoke. The Hito-Shura almost didn't recognize the sound of his own voice as it was very low and almost inaudible. Dante was being serious and not a jerk for once and he really didn't know how to deal with that.

He had never objectively studied the devil hunter this closely before, and if it were possible he seemed even handsomer now with his clean carven, but rugged features that were flushed with passion and without a single flaw. For the very first time in his life, the Hito-Shura found himself not so much bothered by his good looks.

"I do prefer if you call me by name, Dante." He ran a hand through his hair, ruffling the edges a bit with a chagrinned little shake of his head.

"Of course, Naoki." Dante surprisingly said with a nod of his head and gestured to his chest. "You're bleeding."

Naoki looked down and surveyed the small beads of blood that were forming on his collar bone and dripping down his stomach. He hadn't spent enough time at the Fountain of Life and his wounds weren't completely healed. It should have hurt more than what he was feeling now, and yet it did not.

"It's just an abrasion." he dismissed it quickly and then gasped in shocked surprised when he felt the soft, wet heat of Dante's mouth moving over his wound. "What are you doing?"

"There was a reason why I gave you my Candelabrum, Naoki." Dante murmured around a mouthful of his bloody flesh. "Haven't you ever wondered what it was?"

"What?" he tried to ask again, but Dante had grabbed his chin in one hand and tilted his face up and stood to look into his eyes, fingers tightening, almost crushing his jawbone.

Then ever so kindly, the devil hunter placed a hand on the back of Naoki's head and drew him in closer and kissed him. The Hito-Shura felt a little reluctant at first, but in the end he had given in and almost seemed to relish delving with his tongue into the mouth which offered so freely to him.

When Dante pulled away from him with a flourish, Naoki's parted lips were feeling bruised, swollen and very wet. He was also doing something that he hadn't before, he was trembling. Dante noticed this and ran a hand gently through his short hair as if he were lovingly petting some lapdog. He traced one gloved finger along the path of the wound in his side and caught a red droplet of blood on a fingertip.

Naoki choked back on a gasp and the perspiration forming on his brow began to trickle down the side of his face as he watched Dante raise the bloodied hand with a deliberate slowness and lick away all the scarlet from off his fingers seeming to relish the taste. He knew what Dante was doing, gentling him, working on getting him to relax and not be so tense so he could...

The Hito-Shura's thoughts were abruptly cut off as his beaten lips were parted again for another brutally soft kiss and stopped caring about thinking anything at all. Eyes never wavering from Dante's face Naoki grasped and undid the devil hunter's silver belt buckle, the soft clink of metal scrapping against metal a tiny musical note in the otherwise quiet room as he pulled the belt from its loop.

* * * * *

It took them both a minute or so to recuperate, and when Naoki finally did open his eyes, he found himself staring directly into large irises surrounded by heavy black lashes. He marveled over how very brilliant those eyes were, and how they caught and reflected in the light, shifting in color almost like a faceted gem.

Slowly, he raised a hand to his face and rubbed a thumb over his upper lip to swipe away the sweat that had been pooling and collecting there. He had barely begun to slough off the hands of fatigue which had been encircling him when Dante started talking and everything was ruined.

"Don't just sit there looking like someone just hit you in the dick with a brick, Naoki." Dante snapped impatiently at him while still licking at his lips as if savoring a lingering taste. Then as in an act of finality, he pushed forward and kissed Naoki on the forehead. His hands moving sporadically back and forth along the metal beam the Hita-Shura was resting against, fingers alternately clenching then relaxing as he gripped the metal so tightly that his fingers left indents in the metal before pushing himself away and proclaimed. "Demons to kill. Let's rock!"

* * * * *

The Hito-Shura and his demon companions raced up flight after flight of creaky stairs and rode lifts through the sticky humidity, battling relentlessly as they cast down all who stood before them. The demi-fiend could feel his face flush with the hurrying and knew that the last lingering, nagging doubts in his mind were the final shreds of his humanity protesting what had now become his reality.

Suddenly another emotion, a stronger one, pushed the doubt from him, and replaced the empty hole it left with anger. He was angry now, angry that he had lost his friend Isamu, and angry that Chiaki Hayasaka, would soon follow in the same bloody footsteps. He was angry with life and the endless circle of things and soon he'd be having himself a little meeting...with Lucifer himself.

 

 

 


End file.
